"It's like putting spaghetti with sushi. But I think it tastes good together!"
Confidence | Official Trailer | Hulu
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Self Reliance, the lively, funny, weird new Hulu comedy produced by The Lonely Island and directed by New Girl and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse co-star Jake Johnson, has a premise built for action. A sleazy guy named Tommy (played by Johnson) is so depressed and disengaged with his life that he agrees to be part of an underground streaming reality show where he tries to avoid assassins for a month. If he wins, he gets $1 million. If he loses, he dies.
It might sound a lot like a riff on The Most Dangerous Game, or on Stephen King's The Running Man, where desperate victims try to avoid killers looking for kicks. But Self Reliance is a much smaller, quirky and more emotionally driven film, focused on human connection over big shots. Speaking to Polygon ahead of the film's premiere, Johnson says he wasn't looking to any of the obvious "people chasing sports" classics for inspiration.